miércoles, 5 de julio de 2017

From the very first years of his life,
Norman Atelon was a very peculiar man. He was always avoiding situations, which
would cause him to ruin his appearance, such as playing in the mud or during
the rainy season. From the moment he learned to read, he spent his time doing
just that, inside the house, in his room. He didn’t really like the company of
his parents or of any other person. He’d rather have his stories and his
imagination to go with it. That was more than enough.

Norman developed this love of stories through
his upbringing and eventually became one of the most renowned authors in the
world. For some reason, he had dedicated himself to writing children’s books.
His family saw this as odd behavior because he didn’t like people, and children
were his very least favorite. He thought they were obnoxious and repetitive,
not really taking any interest in the real interesting things life had to
offer. He thought they were dull and dirty.

However, the author once explained to his
mother that he loved to write simple stories and that’s why his creations were
considered more suitable for children. He didn’t agree at all but he knew it
was best not to argue too much, because he did want to be taken seriously by
other authors and by the world in general. For a person that didn’t really like
people, Norman had a real need for people to be acceptant of him or, at very
least, of his literature. And the world answered in a big way.

His first book was a recompilation of short
stories and it sold like fresh baked bread. Mothers and fathers all over the
country fell in love with his imaginative creations and the kids really took to
it too. Social media was a very good promotional platform for him, as many kids
that liked his stories loved to paint or draw their favorite characters and
then upload the pictures online. It was all made as a contest by the company
publishing the books and it earned him a lot of money.

So
much he earned, that he became a rich man by the age of twenty-three, when most
people are barely coming out of university, trying to enter a world hostile to
their wishes. The irony was that Norman had never really wanted to be part of
the world. He couldn’t care less if his stories made money or not, he just
wanted to be out there, his name with all the other great names of literature.
That was his achievement and he wanted to feel he had made it big. However,
despite all the success, he didn’t get the recognition he wanted, only the one
he didn’t care about.

That’s why he made an effort at keep getting
better at his craft. He studied, educated himself further abroad and, of
course, he kept writing, almost every day. He lived with his parents for years
until he decided he needed to get out of there but not because he was too old.
He had realized he had to be fully alone to be able to create things that every
other author would be jealous about. So he left his parents in a huff, not
really feeling anything else than the burning desire to be considered a great
author.

His new apartment was small, very small. But
it was located in a very wealthy neighborhood, with everything he could ever
want not very far away. Not that he ever went outside for anything. He hired a
maid to do those kinds of things for her. Food was a waste of time in his mind,
so he dedicated the least amount of time to it, even reading through his meals
or interrupting them abruptly when an idea came to mind. He had always been
very skinny but he soon acquired an additional greenish hue on his skin.

His parents and people he saw for work noticed
this right away but they all knew him too well to say a word. Norman wasn’t the
kind of person to care a lot about personal appearance. However, his mother
convinced him to go to the doctor once. He complained about losing time of his
daily schedule but he went with it. The doctor found him to be a bit underfed
but, aside from that, he was healthy as a horse. It was incredible but he was,
so no one could say anything about it anymore.

The maid was ordered to cook better meals and
he accepted to spend at least twenty straight minutes to breakfast, lunch and
dinner. But he kept reading through the meals, because his mind had to be busy
every single second of the day. People that met him thought it was exhausting
just look at him go through a normal day. Norman was not a normal person at
all; he was very unique in a very particular kind of way. Maybe that was the
reason he didn’t like people that much.

Friends, he did not have. He didn’t have any
use for friendship or love or sex. As far as everyone that knew him was
concerned, Norman was still a virgin and had never bonded with anyone else in
his entire life, not even with other authors. People thought he wanted to be
accepted by them but the fact was he wanted to be considered a true writer, a
member of the group. If the people in the group liked him or not, he didn’t
care one bit. That made people very annoyed by him, even if they were meeting
him for the very first time. Norman was one of a kind.

Ten years passed from his first publication.
He lived in the same apartment, being cooked by the same maid and with his mom
coming in every Sunday, as she had done since he had moved out. However, his
father had died fairly recently so she had to visit alone. But Norman never
seemed to notice his father was not around anymore. He did go to the funeral
but he read a book through the ceremony and during the burial. People were very
angry about it but his mother kept everyone from doing a scene.

However, it was her who made the scene one
day, one of those Sundays she visited her son. She served the meal left by the
maid, as she always did and looked at her son as he ate fast to go back to his
writing. He was working on a book about a young girl and her relationship with
a magical cow. Or something like that, his mom was never that aware of the
stories he made. No one really seemed to be, except his editor. The meal had
gone by as usual except for one little detail.

The mother burst into tears. She had never
done so, not once in her whole life. Not on her childhood home, no in the house
she had bought with her husband and least of all in her son’s apartment. She
just couldn’t keep crying, tear rolling down her cheeks and nose. But that was
not all that happened. Because, as she dried her face, she noticed that her son
just left the table to sit on his table and keep on writing. Then, her sadness
turned into rage, a feeling she had been repressing for many years.

She yelled, as no one had ever yelled at
Norman. Of course, there had been people who had had altercations with him. His
way of being was off-putting to many. But that time, he seemed to actually care
about the person who was yelling. It was his mother and, no matter how his
personality was, he couldn’t just ignore the person that had brought him to
life. She claimed she had been caring for him her whole life and he had never
shown her the slightest sign of affection.

For the first time, it seemed he didn’t have
the right words to say. Norman had developed a very sharp and fast tongue. But
that afternoon, all words seemed to leave him for good. And there was a reason
for that: she was right. He had never shown her affection or any other feeling
for that matter.

He stood up and tried to walk up to her but he
couldn’t. His legs wouldn’t budge. That feeling for her mother, whatever it
was, was being overpowered by his personality. And she noticed. That’s why the
woman grabbed her purse and her coat and never spoke to him again, not even
when he was finally recognized as he had always wanted.

jueves, 15 de diciembre de 2016

In the kitchen, everyone was working at full
capacity. There was not a single person standing by, doing nothing. Every
single worker was doing something, even if they were just apprentices or the
chef himself. All hands were needed for the banquet to go exactly as planned
and one of the most important parts of the whole experience was, of course, the
food. It wasn’t possible to do a proper banquet without a great menu and the
one for that event had been checked at least a hundred times and by a diverse group
of people, all with different tastes.

Of course, the most important person in the
whole gala was the president, as he had been the one to organize the event. It
wasn’t one of those planned things that took place every single year but an
impromptu kind of thing that had arisen from the fact that the president wanted
to do a benefit for a cause he thought had not been helped enough in recent
years. Public opinion was really divided on the subject but most people admired
what he had done and how he had done it. After all, it was very uncommon for a
president to stop his work to do something else.

Some papers were criticizing every single
aspect of the event, from the price of the food and the flower arrangements, to
the list of guests. Some said it was too big and others too small. Some said he
had invited people from the wrong countries and organizations and others
praised him exactly for that. It wasn’t new that the press was not in agreement
completely; they had always been very divided on the presidency from day one,
which had taken place a little more than a year ago, after a very uncommon
period of transition.

Awkward was the better word because the new
president had asked the old one to give him an office in the presidential
headquarters, as he wanted to check on everything as it happened. Such a thing
had never been attempted and a certain distance was thought to be the wisest
thing when dealing with such a moment. But from the first moment of him been
the president elect of the country, it was very clear he wasn’t going to be
like any other president, in the country’s past or in other countries. He was,
for lack of a better word, uncommon.

Very uncommon indeed as he had won in the most
unexpected way, when many people had decided it was the best to make a change
at the very last minute. Polls had never granted him the presidency and he
thought, the morning of the election itself, that he was going to lose for sure
but he wanted to go away gracefully so he did something unexpected: he shared the
day with people around his city, visiting tourist spots and taking random
pictures. Apparently people loved that because in the afternoon, polling
stations were filled with voters.

By the end of the night, he had been declared
the winner with over five percent of the vote over the other candidate; a woman
everyone had predicted would be the next president. She was the very opposite
of him, someone who seemed to have fire in her eyes, always talking with an
amount of passion that seemed to much for such a small woman. Millions adored
her and, of course, by the big conglomerates that actually controlled the
country. She loved to speak about economics and foreign affairs and all such
things.

However, the new president had never really
been passionate for anything. To be perfectly honest, he had been chosen out of
nowhere by the third most important party in the country. It was predicted that
the two most voted parties in the last election would hold the same spots in
the new election but that didn’t happen. People were tired of the game between
those two parties that, at the end of the day, were exactly the same party if
you were to compare their policies on several key elements of people’s lives.
They just had slight differences.

Studies on those elections would last for
years, as never had predicted that surge of a third option. And now that third
option was organizing an impromptu dinner in honor of a cause many thought
wasn’t “attractive” enough. In this day and age, people still thought some
subjects were best not spoken out loud, in the open, much less in a fancy
dinner table with expensive Champaign and a band playing music from eighty
years ago. The president was known by now for his odd choices and that was also
reflected on his choice of food.

The people in the kitchen had elaborated a
menu that mixed very high cuisine with foods that everyone loved. The dishes
were particularly successful among the special guests of the evening. In other
words, the people that were directly affected by the charity they were raising
money form. After all, they were all normal people that did not really have
experience in fancy dinners and strange food, so the combination of high
cuisine experiments with almost fast food, was a success among them and many
presidential supporters.

Of course, the richest people in the event
weren’t very thrilled to be eating what were basically hamburgers, hot dogs and
fried chicken, in a very old hall that had a long history of elegant banquets
to celebrate the riches of the rich, instead of charitable efforts. However,
the rich were never shy when it came to donating, as it was the perfect way to
pay fewer taxes and to be seen as some kind of savior by the people that were
benefitted by that money they didn’t need.

It was incredible to see how the people, the
same that had voted for the president, supported him again on that decision and
thought the choices overall were just excellent. Some thought they were funny
enough but everyone agreed that it was the necessary shake up that needed to
happen in such a stiff political environment. Everyone took things too
seriously sometimes and it was nice to see that the president had a sense of
humor or at least the capacity to be different. People admired him for that,
long before he was a president.

It was never really clear if he did those
things on purpose or if everything was kind of a “happy accident”. Whatever it
was, it always seemed to work. It was the same thing when he worked for a large
software conglomerate where most of the workers were younger than him and he
wasn’t even that old. At first they mistrusted him because they didn’t thought
it was possible he would even know about what they did in the company, but
after a while he showed everyone how interested and invested he was on the
company, surprising them in many ways.

Of course, he was always nervous. He had even
joked that he would love to have a first lady by his side to have someone to
hold hands with in the most tense and difficult moments. He even joked he would
settle for a first gentleman and some of the journalists laughed out loud that day.
He was something very unexpected and was attacked because he wasn’t the same
kind of politician everyone had seen once and again for the last hundred years.
But that’s exactly why so many people supported him; he was very different from
them all.

Some of his supporters had even organized
meetings to help him with some subjects and to get him to talk about things
that people felt were important in that moment. And he was gracious enough to
hear them, after the meetings he had to attend about the economy or foreign
trade or who knows what. He always had time for everyone and he seemed to be happier
when talking and sharing with actual people. That’s why some said he was the
best president in the world and others said he was a disaster waiting to
happen.

After the gala, he sent the millions won for
the charity to the proper people and many were able to find some kind of solace
in the fact that he had remembered them as victims. Rumors of a second term
were already in the air. But when asked about it, he always laughed loudly and
said he would rather end the one he was in first to see if he was successful enough
to deserve more time. Of course, three years later, he won by a landslide,
another unexpected win.

martes, 13 de septiembre de 2016

The sound of the train passing over the
tracks had been enough for her to fall asleep. But now that she was waking up,
the sound seemed to be louder, much less calming. Anne had decided to visit her
aunt Sylvia once in the spring, as her mother had asked her so many years ago,
way before she had died in that horrible accident with her father. It was a
tragedy the family didn’t discuss openly but that had carved deep scars between
all of them. The deepest one had to do with the Cheever girls, Anne and her
sister Marissa, having to run the business her father had owned. Her aunt and
uncles had wanted that for themselves but her father had been very clear now in
his will.

As
Anne watched the trees pass by her the window beside her, she felt suddenly
annoyed. Even with the shiny sun outside and the beautiful scenery of the
region, she couldn’t forget the reason she was there: her sister Marissa, who
was older and supposedly wiser, had realized running a store such as her
fathers was a very difficult task that needed the hand of a strong man. After
all, the times they lived in weren’t precisely easy for young women like them
and not one or the other had chosen a bachelor yet. The fact that they were
orphans made the deal even harder to achieve, as most parents would be quite
disturbed to have to arrange everything with the bride instead that with her
parents. Traditions were not something people threw away often in that corner
of the world.

Aunt Sylvia had married Octavius Potter, a
businessman who owned a very well known chain of new restaurants called
Norma’s. Those places were supposed to bring the charm of country cuisine into
the big cities and towns of the country and, by whatever rumors Marissa had
been listening to, apparently Potter was hitting the jackpot with such an
invention. People hadn’t heard about anything like that in this side of the
ocean and, naturally, they were all eager to try out something new and exciting
that everyone just wanted to experience. Even Anne had been to a Norma’s
restaurant with Marissa but their experience had left a lot to be desired.

As she contemplated a small town of beautiful
small red houses, Anne remembered the dreadful deserts and sour tea she had
tasted with her sister in that restaurant. And the comments from their friends
who had visited were not much better. Maybe it was that branch in particular
that wasn’t really working up to Mr. Potter’s expectations but Marissa soon
forgot all about that when she heard about the money. It was what they needed.
The small convenience store managed by the Cheevers was going through a very
rough season and, if they couldn’t find a solution, they would have to close
down the store that their father had inherited from their grandpa, who had
established it himself at a very young age. It would be the disgrace of their
name and the final nail in the marriage coffins.

As the train started to hit the brakes, Anne
felt she was sweating. Of course, she was very nervous about seeing her aunt
again. They hadn’t talked since her parent’s funeral and after that not even a
letter had been exchanged. She knew everything was going to be tense and
Marissa had had the stupid idea to make her stay there for a whole week. As she
stood up to grab her suitcase from the upper compartment, Anne realized that
she was there and there was no turning back. She owed it to her parents to try
to make the best sales pitch ever to her aunt and her husband in order for
their lives not to be ruined for good.

However, as she stepped on the platform of the
station, she couldn’t see her aunt Sylvia or Octavius Potter anywhere in the
vicinity. Many people descended along with her, so the platform got very
crowded and she decided it was better to stand outside and wait for them to
arrive there. But nothing happened either. Everyone who had come for a
passenger, or had been a passenger themselves, had already left. There was no
one else there except an old man who appeared to manage schedules and helped
people in need although it wasn’t very clear who would need any help in such a
small station. It had to be said that Mr. Potter, although managing a
successful business, had decided to leave rather away from the spotlight, in a
small town called Caltot. So Anne was not very surprised to not see a single
soul near her for the following hour.

Yes, Anne had to wait for up to an hour in the
shade, trying to keep her hair from curling further and her skin from being
exposed to the damaging sunlight. She was about to lose it when a young man,
about her age, appeared on a bicycle. He stopped in front of her and talked as
if they had been acquainted for quite some time. The truth was that Anne was so
shocked at this behavior that she didn’t even acknowledge what the man was
saying. Out of nowhere, she turned around, grabbed her suitcase from the floor
and entered the station again. She had decided to go back home.

The young man rapidly crossed her path and
talked to her again, slowly and looking straight into her eyes to make sure she
was listening this time. He didn’t grab her, yelled or did anything
inappropriate. He just said he had been sent by Mr. Potter to pick her up at
the station, as they knew she would be arriving momentarily. They apologized
for not being able to pick her up themselves, but apparently everyone was too
busy in their house and couldn’t be bothered to just go to the station and pick
their relative. Anne calmed down and the man waited until she seemed less
furious. Then he suggested she jumped onto the bike and rode with him but that
made Anne even more furious so the boy realized he should stop talking and just
decided to walk back to the house.

As they walked over the narrow streets of the
town, he told Anne he was Mr. Potter’s assistant. He was in charge of getting
everything his boss needed in order to be comfortable in any given day.
Normally, he would only do things related to work but often Mr. Potter had
other demands that had nothing to do with work. Out of nowhere, Anne said that
was appalling. As she lived in the city, she knew how horrible it could be to
work without a proper pay. Granted, she was a woman and there was no real way
she could know anything for a fact, but she assured the young man she wouldn’t
rest until she got a fair pay.

Then she stopped and went all red. Not only
because she talked so candidly to that man but also because she hadn’t been a
proper lady. She did not know her name. He said his name with a big smile on
his face, as he was proud of something he hadn’t chosen for himself. Frederick
March. He was called March by Mr. Potter but everyone else in town called him
Fred. They shook hands, as Anne presented herself to him in a manner that made
him smile even further. She stopped short when she realized she was being
mocked. As headstrong as she was, Anne decided not to talk anymore with Fred,
instead leading him into the town and towards the Potter’s house but that ended
shortly because, of course, she had no idea where to go. Fred was kind enough
not to laugh anymore although Anne felt he smiled behind her back.

Once they arrived at the house, Anne realized
all the rumors were true: the house was enormous and occupied a large portion
of the side of the main square of town. The church was directly across it and
the city hall was just on the side. It was beautifully decorated. So
magnificent were the paintings on the wood on the outside, that Anne had to
step away from the building to appreciate it better. Fred told her that the
house had been restored completely by Mr. Potter, just a couple of months after
him moving here with Anne’s aunt. Fred also said the lady of the house could be
very strong in character but she made her voice be heard and her opinion be
respected.

Anne wanted to know more about Fred’s
perception of her aunt as he said this, because the hard truth was that she
didn’t know anything about her own relative. They had been apart for so long
that the girl even doubted she actually knew what her aunt looked like. Two
seconds afterwards, the front door of the house burst open: her aunt was there,
breathing heavily, her hands and face covered in blood. She was hysterical,
crying and yelling and saying something. Both Fred and Anne ran to help but the
scene they saw through the threshold of the house was enough to freeze them
solid: Octavius Potter had his intestines out and about, leaning against a
piece of furniture.

As Anne tried not to keep watching the
horrible scene, she heard her aunt say: “I didn’t do it!” She sobbed so hard
everyone in town was attracted to the square and, in no time, Anne saw herself
submerged in a mystery she could have never seen coming, or the people of Caltot,
which she would be able to get to know very well in the upcoming days.

martes, 19 de julio de 2016

Gustav had been waking up early for year.
Since he was a baby, he had a thing for waking up his parents very early in the
y day and not been able to sleep until it was later in the day, so late that
their whole morning routine was disturbed by his actions. They didn’t need a
clockwork because his timing which was always perfect. Every single morning at
nine o’clock he would start crying and would do it for about two hours until he
stopped and resumed later that day, in the evenings.

After that, in preschool, he was considered a
very different little boy. He woke up before his mother and his father and was
able to serve himself a glass of orange juice which he drank as he waited for
them to wake up. The bus picked him up at seven and he woke up at six every
single day, no exception. As he got older, he was able to dress himself and
work the shower in order to have the water in the right temperature, the one he
preferred.

In his preteens, he was teased by all the
other kids because of such things. As per usual, they didn’t like him because
he was so different. He wasn’t a genius or anything like that. His parents
thought he would demonstrate at an early age his remarkable brain and that they
would have to homeschool him because of how special he was going to be. But the
truth was much different: he was only different because his eyes started to
bother him from an early stage and glasses were needed sooner than expected.

Gustav knew he needed the glasses but he was
sure to take them out whenever he was able. He liked to take them off in the
bus back home or in class when he was sleepy. Most adults didn’t like when he
did that but the truth was he had never grown accustomed to sing them.
Sometimes, on weekends, he wouldn0t use them at all, instead playing around the
house like a normal kid having no problem with his vision.

As a teenager he was still harassed by his
classmates, pushed around occasionally, especially after gym class. It was the
favorite moment of the week for jocks who were eager to prove themselves more
important than everyone else. Even then, he was the first to arrive to school
and that granted him with a special knowledge of everyone’s ways to do things.

He realized the people that annoyed him had a
really bad problem with sleeping so what he did was just avoid them in places
they would never go on and if that wasn’t working, he would always know which
classrooms were available to tell them in order for him to be released and them
to have a nice nap or even for kissing their girlfriend. Whatever it was,
Gustav knew it was useful information.

Even in college, living away from his parents,
he woke up very early in the morning to read the notes he had taken the way
before. It was his technique for remembering stuff. The other good thing was
that he always had a great seat in the earlier classes of the day and sometimes
they did put up the most interesting ones very early.

Different from high school, Gustav became one
of those people that everyone knew in college. At first, he didn’t really have
any friends but every single person knew who he was. He soon made real friends
and in no time he was going to parties and drinking and smoking and doing every
single thing teenagers do if they want to defy the authority out up to control
them. After all, Gustav was only special in so many ways and, sadly, not really
in a significant one that can save anyone from anything.

Even after weekend long parties, he found
himself waking up drunk or with a huge hangover very early in the morning. No
one ever did that so that made him very notable in his group of people. It
wasn’t that they made fun of him but rather that that they seem to be really
captivated by how strange he was. And he knew they were all looking at him so
he decided to be more interesting and started changing his clothes and doing
more interesting things with that extra time he seemed to have every single
day.

He started to smuggle drugs into the campus
the second year he attended college. Some guy he had met at a party told him
about the huge amount of money he could get just buy passing the product from
one person to the other, he didn’t really had to sell anything, he just had to
help the product get to the real buyer. He never really knew who that person
was, but he was very excited about being involved in such a thing.

As
he woke up so early, he could easily grab the packages from one site and put it
in the next without anyone saying anything. The only people that were awake so
early were the members of the cleaning crew and many of them were also involved
in the network of drug handlers. He was proud of himself because he had proven
himself to be useful in some way. He had never felt that, not in his career and
not before at home or elsewhere.

The
smuggling business lasted for two whole years until some idiot was busted with
a large pack of ecstasy pills in a park, at night. Apparently, she had the
stupid idea of trying to rob one pill from the package and when she opened it
every single pill jumped out of the small bag and fell into the grass in the
middle of campus. The police was notified fast by some older woman and the girl
was arrested and possibly sent to prison fro drug trafficking. The thrills
ended for everyone that day.

He knew he was lucky that he never got caught
but, even so, Gustav was kind of sad that part of his life was over. Soon, he
would graduate and he would have to confront the real world on his own. The
truth was he didn’t feel ready to take on anything by himself. He used his
morning time to walk around, to get to the roof of his dorm and lay down
looking art the sky and watching the last stars of the night disappear. He
thought of his decisions and his possibilities in a world that asked everyone
to be exceptional, special in some way but no one really was.

When he received his diploma, he came back
home for some time. It was nice to see his parents again and feeling they were
as proud of him then as they had been years before, when he thought he was the
most special little boy to live in the planet. They were really nice people,
honest and full of good principles that they had tried to put into his son. But
they had failed and that’s why he couldn’t be in their presence for long. It
could get very exhausting.

Soon, he got a job in the city so he moved to
a small place and started making a life for himself. He was lucky enough to
land a job that required him to be very early every day so he didn’t really
mind. He was a cameraman in a morning show and that always happened very early.
His coworkers were always very tired in the morning, having to drink two or
even three cups of coffee to actually work. He didn’t need that.

His superiors realized that and decided to
assign him to a reporter that was in charge of all the “night stories”. He went
all over the city in the darkest hours to report on what was happening like
road accidents, cases of violence, curious occurrences and all types of things
that happened really late or early in the day. Gustav felt he was in the
perfect place, being able to do his work in the best way possible.

After his first six months, his boss was so
impressed with his work that he decided to assign him the job of reporter after
the one they had decided to drop out because of the “difficult job schedule”.
Gustav was very thankful because he had never thought of being in front of the
camera instead of behind it. He got some classes on how to speak properly and
he documented himself on the city. By the time he started, every person looking
just fell in love with him.

For that work, he received a lot of praise
including several awards that made him kind of a famous personality in TV. He
eventually got married and received many other proposals for similar jobs and
he would consider them all because he had finally understood he did have
something that made him special. It was just it wasn’t the most amazing thing
ever.